“Yes,” said Velveteen firmly. “This isn’t your fight.”
“Tag was my friend before you knew him,” said Jackie.
“They have my girlfriend,” said Victory Anna.
“I’m not even going to dignify that statement,” said the Princess. “Bless your heart, I know it’s in the right place, but if you want to leave without us, you’re going to need to fight us first, and you’re going to need to fight us like you really mean it. Can you do that, sweetie? Are you prepared for the consequences? Because I honestly don’t think you are. I think you need your friends with you. And I’d like to think you’re smart enough to know that.”
Velveteen looked from face to face. Then, finally, she sighed. “All right,” she said. “You can come with me. I guess having a flying carpet will come in handy, anyway.”
“See? You’re getting smarter already.” The Princess linked her arm with Velveteen’s, and the four heroines walked out in a line. They looked mismatched and shabby, nothing that could possibly challenge an empire. They didn’t look back.
Three hours later, Victory Anna was sitting primly in the middle of the Princess’s flying carpet, watching as Velveteen was noisily sick over the side. “If you can, try and hit a seagull,” she suggested. “They’re essentially rats with wings, so it isn’t impolite, and at least if you can aim your vomit, we can pretend that it’s an asset.”
“Someone kill her,” moaned Velveteen, before going into another series of dry-heaves.
“She doesn’t fly well, does she?” Jackie was avoiding the whole “flying carpet” issue by skating alongside, using moisture pulled down from low-hanging clouds to form her ice bridges. The seawater was too salty to really work, unless she wanted to risk the ice dissolving under her skates and sending her plunging into the Pacific.
“Her powers don’t require her to.” The Princess was standing like the figurehead at the front of a ship, her toes actually skirting out into the open air. Her hair and dress both whipped out behind her in a way that was just so, so perfect that it would have broken the hearts of a thousand animators. This was her element. This was where she belonged.
“Neither do mine, and I appear to be doing quite well, thank you very much,” said Victory Anna, as she powered up her ray gun. A seagull flew by. She blasted it out of the air and smiled. “I find this invigorating.”
“You were a supervillain when we met,” moaned Velveteen, before she went back to vomiting over the side.
“Victory Anna, stop shooting at the seagulls, they’ve never done you any harm,” said the Princess, eyes still fixed on the horizon. “We’re flying by a chart here, and I’d rather not lose my focus because I’m too busy yelling at y’all to behave like human beings.”
“My human being status is provisional and has not been independently verified via scientific review,” said Jackie.
The Princess shot her a glare, but didn’t budge from her position at the head of the carpet. “Second star to the right,” she said. “Straight on until morning. Hold your places, girls, it’s going to be a long night.”
Velveteen groaned.
The charts provided by Dame Fortuna had been long on symbolism, low on actual directions. According to the Princess, this was par for the course when trying to track down a magical hero who had chosen to go to ground. “You try drawing a map to the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle,” she’d said. “It can’t be done. It’s all ‘wish on a star’ and ‘believe in your heart.’ Well, this is about as specific. I can get us there. No wishes required.” That simple statement had somehow resulted in them flying for hours over the Pacific Ocean, startling yachts, ocean liners, and the occasional jumbo jet as they maintained their steady bearing.
Velveteen (who had long since run out of any cookies to toss, and was now reduced to tossing the memory of cookies that had been eaten years before) was on the verge of suggesting they turn around when one of the Princess’s songbirds came flying out of a cloud bank, wings beating frantically as it tried to stay aloft. It looked exhausted. Velveteen understood the feeling.
“There you are.” The Princess held up one delicate hand. The songbird collapsed gratefully into it, beginning to chirp and warble. “Really?” More chirping. “Are you sure?” A long, drawn-out note, that ended in the avian equivalent of coughing. “Oh, you poor dear. Of course.” The Princess tucked the bedraggled little pile of feathers into the bodice of her gown before turning to the others, a smile on her face.
“We’ve got a sighting, ladies. Check your masks and ready your powers, because the Phantom Doll is moored just ahead.
“You mean we actually found him?” Velveteen stood up, forgetting to be airsick. “We actually found Jolly Roger?”
“We found Jolly Roger’s ship,” said the Princess. “Whether that comes with the man himself is yet to be seen—but yes, we actually found him.”
“Let’s see if he makes us walk the plank,” said Jackie, with far more good cheer than the statement really deserved. She did a spin on her ice bridge, then skated down on the wide swoop that had suddenly appeared, causing her to resemble nothing so much as a glittery pinball rocketing toward certain doom.
“That girl’s gonna die ugly one day,” said the Princess fondly. She made a complicated gesture with her hand and, before Velveteen could take a breath, the flying carpet dropped straight down. Velveteen clung to the fringe, screaming. Victory Anna clung to the fabric, looking faintly put-out. And the Princess stayed exactly where she was, looking as serene as if she were not riding a piece of home decor down into the mists above the sea.
Jolly Roger’s ship, the Phantom Doll, was almost as famous as the eponymous pirate, once upon a time. Despite Jolly Roger having left the team before The Super Patriots, Inc. could become the power that they would develop into, no fewer than five Phantom Doll play sets had been developed, and all of them had retained their value well on the secondary market. Consequentially, everyone knew what the Phantom Doll looked like.
But no plastic play set could encompass the reality of a great, barnacle- encrusted ship, its sails limp in the absence of a breeze, or its mahogany mermaid figurehead. It was the figurehead who greeted them as they approached, the Princess now steering her carpet low and tight above the surface of the water, Jackie skating carefully on an ice bridge that was mostly foam.
“Who goes there?” asked the figurehead. Her voice was much sweeter than anyone would have expected from a piece of wood.
“Um. Hello.” Velveteen stood, feeling considerably better now that she didn’t have as far to fall. “My name is Velveteen, and—”
“That name is more honest than it should be, but it’s not enough. Not here.” The mermaid turned her head, regarding them with blank wooden eyes. “What name were you born with, girl?”
“Velma Martinez,” said Velveteen, who couldn’t quite see the point in lying to a statue. It could be hers if she wanted it, if she was willing to fight for it, and because it had eyes, the whole Phantom Doll could be hers as well. There was something comforting in that knowledge. “Most people just call me Vel.”
“A good compromise. Who are your friends?”
“Victoria Cogsworth, at your service,” said Victory Anna.
“Jacqueline Snow-Frost,” said Jackie.
“My name is Carrabelle Miller,” said the Princess. “If you want to know what my parents called me, then you’re looking for Scott Miller. But that’s never been my name.”
The mermaid nodded, seeming to accept this without question. “Why are you here?”
“We need to talk to Jolly Roger,” said Velveteen. “I’m getting ready to go up against The Super Patriots—I mean, we’re getting ready to go up against The Super Patriots—and I want to know if he can help us.”
“Jolly Roger is retired,” said the mermaid. “You have come for nothing.”
“I don’t think you understand,” said Velveteen. “I was a trainee, and they nearly broke me. They did break my best friend, only s
he put herself back together and managed to run away. Now they have her, and I need to get her back. He has to help us.”
“Jolly Roger is retired,” repeated the mermaid. Her pretty wooden lips parted, revealing teeth that would have been better suited to an anglerfish. “Leave.”
“No,” said Velveteen flatly.
“Uh…” said Jackie.
Victory Anna’s only response was a feral smile, and the sound of her ray gun powering up.
Velveteen held up a hand, indicating that the others should be still. Then, narrowing her eyes, she reached out with her mind and seized the Phantom Doll.
It wasn’t like animating a doll or a statue, something that had no will of its own; the ship was awake, aware, and if it had been a true intelligence, she wouldn’t have been able to take it at all. But the Phantom Doll was just an extension of Jolly Roger’s power. The mermaid was just wood, animated by a magical hero who wanted to be left alone. Velveteen wanted the ship more in that moment than he did, and so she made it hers.
“Welcome aboard,” said the mermaid, sounding dazed.
The Princess gave Velveteen a concerned look as the carpet rose up to the level of the rail, sailed gently over it, and touched down on the deck. Victory Anna bounded past her to the wood, seemingly unaware of the significance of the moment. As she passed, she said blithely, “Changing your name was a good idea, really. ‘Scott’ is a terrible name for a little girl.”
Jackie skated to the deck, blinking after Victory Anna. “Uh, Princess, I don’t think—”
“Leave it.” The Princess smiled. “She’s right. Scott was a terrible name for my parents to slap on their only daughter. Not their fault they were confused.” Then she stepped off the carpet, which promptly lost the last of the tension that had been holding it rigid. “Vel, honey, you coming?”
“I am.” Velveteen stepped off the carpet, eyes still narrowed in the way that meant she was working hard to use her powers. “He should realize I’ve taken his ship by now. He’ll be here in five, four—”
The door to the captain’s cabin banged open and a man in full pirate regalia burst onto the deck, a sword in either hand. “Stand, ye lily-livered villains!” he bellowed.
“You’re a little off today,” said Jackie, and then Jolly Roger charged, and the fight was on.
At the height of his power and popularity, Jolly Roger was potentially one of the greatest magical heroes the world would ever see. He could control the weather surrounding his ship, command the ocean, and with his trustworthy crew keeping the Phantom Doll shipshape, it seemed like nothing would ever defeat him. But that was before he left the crew stranded in Tijuana and parked himself in the middle of nowhere, using his powers only to keep himself fed, stave off scurvy, and cloak his location in a shroud of unyielding fog. He was out of practice. He was out of shape. And he was up against four superheroines in their prime, who felt that they had nothing left to lose.
He could have taken any one of them if they’d been fighting alone. He could potentially have taken any two of them, as long as those two weren’t Velveteen and the Princess, since having his ship refuse to obey his commands while the rats from the hold swarmed him in a living wave was disconcerting, to say the least. But four of them? It was no contest. It was just a short, more than slightly painful trouncing.
When the fight was over, and Jolly Roger was tied to a chair with rope from his own deck, the four heroines assembled nervously in front of him. Velveteen and the Princess, at least, appreciated the enormity of what they’d just done. Victory Anna had grown up in a world where Jolly Roger didn’t help to define the childhoods of a generation, and Jackie was, well, Jackie. Velveteen sometimes wondered if there was anything that could actually impress her.
“Ye’ve shivered me timbers but good,” snarled Jolly Roger. Then he coughed, and continued, in a perfectly normal Middle American accent, “So I suppose you’ll be plundering my ship and heading on your way, then. Could you give her back to me before you go? I know that her personality is technically just a side effect of my presence, but we’ve been together for a long, long time, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Your powers would generate a new ship in short order,” said the Princess.
“Ah, but that ship wouldn’t be my Phantom Doll, now, would she? I have a lot of good memories on this deck, although it’s hard to bring them to mind when I’m being tied up by a bunch of children.”
“A lady never reveals her age, but I assure you, we’re not children,” said Victory Anna. She powered down her ray gun, pointing the muzzle at the sky, where nervous seagulls rerouted their flight patterns around her. “Why are we bothering with this prat, Velveteen? It’s clear that he can’t help us.”
“No, it’s clear that he doesn’t want to. Yet. That’s going to change.” Velveteen stepped forward. The others stopped talking, moving back slightly to make it clear that she was in charge; that she was the one he needed to worry about dealing with. “Hello, Jolly Roger.”
“Hello, bunny-eared girl who’s taken over my ship.” He squinted. “You’re an animus, aren’t you? A damned powerful one, if my measure’s not off. And the way you fight—you were trained by The Super Patriots. Have you come to collect the bounty on my head?”
“I’ve come because Dame Fortuna told me how to find you, and we need your help.” Velveteen crossed her arms. “The Super Patriots are corrupt, and I think Marketing is evil, and they have my best friend, and we want her back. Not just her. We want all the heroes they have in their control to be able to choose their own lives, without being bound by illegal contracts.”
Jolly Roger blinked, several times, before turning to the Princess. “Is she for real?”
“She is,” said the Princess, sounding smug. “She would have been happy stayin’ out of the way for her entire life, but The Super Patriots forgot the first rule of rabbits.”
“Carrots?”
“Don’t follow them into their dens. They’re meaner than they look.”
“Princess, untie him,” said Velveteen. Eyes still on Jolly Roger, she continued, “You were the first one to get out; you were the first broken heart they couldn’t bury. They’ve killed so many people since then, and no one’s willing to stand against them. Please. Help us.”
“You can’t just punch a corporation into submission, girl,” said Jolly Roger. Rats ran up his legs, heading for the ropes; he didn’t flinch. “They have lawyers. Rules. Legal protections.”
“Oh, but see, they were in charge of setting a lot of those legal protections, and they wanted to be able to stage messy coups for team leadership every once in a while. For the sales, you know.” Jackie smiled, white teeth bright against blue skin. “So we sort of can punch a corporation into submission, as long as it’s this one.”
“Girl…”
“You quit.” Jolly Roger’s attention snapped back to Velveteen. She was staring at him pleadingly, hands now clasped in front of her chest. “After the fight, after Majesty and Supermodel and the trainees died, you walked away. You knew that it was turning bad.”
“Oh, girl.” Jolly Roger stood, rat-chewed ropes falling away. “It had been bad for a long time when we reached that point. The fight was…it was the last that was good in a lot of us, trying to do what we all devoted our lives to. Trying to make us into heroes, one last time. Supermodel was already too far gone. She’d been fighting against her own inner darkness longer than any of the rest of us had known that the danger was there. Maybe if she’d told us sooner…”
“Santa tried,” said Jackie. “He put her on the Naughty List, year after year, hoping you’d get the clue.”
“Ah, lass, we didn’t put that much stock in Santa. Trick and Treat were only trainees then, and we still half-believed they were lying about their origins. You come from a holiday. You’ve always believed they were real places. For us, that’s a pretty new sea to sail.” He shook his head. “We didn’t know. We couldn’t save her.”
Velveteen bit her lip. “Please—”
“We couldn’t save any of them!” Jolly Roger wheeled on her, and for a moment—just a moment, but that was long enough—she could see the hero he’d been when he was in his prime. The man who’d helped to found The Super Patriots. The one who’d known how to bring the heroes of the world together. “Do you understand me? We had eleven trainees. Four of them were assessed as level five heroes. Only five of them survived, and if what news has reached me here is true, not all of them truly recovered.”
Deadbolt had a drinking problem. Second Chance took risks that no one should take. Trick and Treat were, well, Trick and Treat. Only Imagineer seemed even halfway normal, and she’d always been a little odd. “What, you think those were the last casualties?” Velveteen demanded. “The Super Patriots bought me from my parents. Me, and all my friends, and they broke us just like your trainees got broken, only they didn’t have the decency to do it in a battle, where other people would be willing to acknowledge we’d been hurt. They did it with focus groups, and with surveys and with rule after rule after rule, until most of us were too shattered to get away.” Velveteen dropped her hands, looking at him. “You were the first one broken. Help me. Help us. This has to stop.”
“I’m just an old, retired pirate, girl. There’s nothing I can do.” Jolly Roger tipped his hat to the group. “Thank you kindly for your visit, and for the rumble. You can show yourselves out.” Then he turned, and walked back into his cabin, and shut the door.
“We can do this without him,” said Jackie. Her words sounded thin even to her own ears. “He said it himself. He’s just an old dude who got out of the game. The four of us mopped the floor with him. He wouldn’t be any use.”
“We only beat him because he’s removed himself from the public eye,” said the Princess. “Magical heroes, we need to be seen once in a while if we want to keep our powers charged. If he sailed back to shore, he’d be unstoppable.”
“He’s an icon,” said Velveteen, reaching up to straighten her bunny-eared headband. “A figurehead, like that mermaid of his. We don’t need him because he’s awesome. We need him because he’s Jolly Roger, the one who got away, and having him with us will mean that we’re serious.” It would bring all the undecided and half-decided heroes out of the shadows, the minor powers, the malcontents, the ones who would make up their army.